L.A. County District Attorney launches treatment program offering help to child prostitutes

Two Los Angeles County Juvenile Court branches will soon offer an alternative to jail for minors arrested for prostitution, District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced Wednesday.

The diversion program, called First Step, is aimed at reducing the number of sex trafficking victims, who often end up in a jail-to-street recidivism cycle after being lured into prostitution at a young age. It will roll out in the San Fernando Valley and South Los Angeles,

“We believe that minors who engage in sex for pay are victims, not criminals,” Lacey told reporters. “We believe that we should help these children, not detain them.”

Between 2000 and 2010, the juvenile division of the District Attorney’s Office filed 2,188 petitions against minors caught soliciting or loitering with the intent to solicit prostitution.

The new program will provide a year of crisis intervention, sexual-assault and mental-health counseling, substance-abuse treatment, education and other social services for girls who agree to participate. Lacey’s office will work with the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and a number of nonprofits.

At the end of that year, the youths who have completed the program will have the arrest that led to their participation cleared from their criminal record.

Lacey noted that pimps target the vulnerable — runaway and homeless children, youths with drug problems or those that have been abused at home — and the program offers an alternative to criminalizing kids. Most of those involved are girls, with a smaller number of boys.

“These are the victims who have been robbed of hope at a very young age,” Lacey said. “We want to stand beside these young victims and show them there is a way out if they just take the first step.”

The program will roll out in Sylmar and Compton first, two areas with a high number of arrests in the 12-to-17-year-old age group.

City Councilwoman Nury Martinez, who represents much of the area served by the Sylmar Juvenile Court, has spoken publicly of the need to focus resources on the large number of youths being pushed into the sex trade.

In Martinez’s district, two corridors — one along Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys, the other along Lankershim Boulevard and San Fernando Road in Sun Valley — routinely attract girls plying the sex trade and the pimps who control them.

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“Part of what we need to remember is that a lot of these (kids) come from a place where there isn’t a family structure for them, which makes them more vulnerable to this sort of abuse,” she said.

Martinez said combating the issue is a matter of attacking the problem from a number of sides: increased prosecution for the johns who pay for sex, increased enforcement of penalties for the pimps who control the prostitutes and continued contact with the youths affected to show them possibilities for a life off the streets.

“It’s an important part of the puzzle,” she said of efforts like First Step. “It’s part of continuing to reach out. I’m glad to see that it’s happening, and I’m glad to see that it’s happening in the Valley.”